The Red House Read online

  I’ll do the greasy stuff in this sink, said Daisy. You can do the glasses in that one.

  Let’s play the story game, said Benjy.

  Concentrate, said Angela. If you drop any it’ll be coming out of your pocket money.

  Which story game? said Daisy.

  The one where you say a word and I say a word then Mum says a word and we have to make up a silly story.

  So long as it doesn’t have poo in it, all right?

  But I like stories with poo in.

  We know, said Angela, patting his head, but that’s a personal problem and I really do think you should keep it to yourself.

  OK, then, but I start.

  Go on then.

  Once …

  There …

  Was …

  Tangerines …

  You can’t have ‘was tangerines’.

  Why not?

  Because it’s grammatically incorrect.

  OK. Once there was a …

  Grapefruit …

  But I wanted ‘tangerine’.

  It’s not your go. You have to wait till your next turn and then add something ridiculous. So … Once there was a grapefruit …

  Whose …

  Trousers …

  Were …

  Made …

  By …

  A …

  Squirrel …

  Who …

  Lived …

  In …

  A …

  Handbag …

  Made …

  Of …

  Poo …

  Benjy …

  * * *

  Melissa popped open the second Rotring tin, took one of the joints out and smelt it. Resin. Like the stuff you used on violin bows in its little velvet handkerchief. It was a kind of amber, wasn’t it? Rebuilding dinosaurs from mosquito blood. God, the T. rex should have eaten those whiny kids. She got stoned with Mum once and Mum told her how Dad tied her to the bed with the dressing-gown cord sometimes, which was really funny at the time and so deeply not funny the following morning. And when Megan tried it for the first time … This is totally fucking freaking me out, all snot and mascara, so Melissa spent the whole night feeding her mugs of black coffee and letting her win at Pictionary. But Melissa liked being stoned, the way everything backed off and time went rubbery.

  She checked the landing was clear. Downstairs the clatter of plates. There was a door at the end leading to a flight of stone steps into the garden. She opened the Yale lock and left it on the latch and stepped out into the dark. The moon was almost full, ragged clouds were racing high up, but the air in the valley was completely still. The dog was still barking. God, she was going to be hearing it in her sleep for the next month. Faint voices from the yellow windows, everyone drinking coffee and talking bollocks about schools and house prices. She sat on the rusted lawn roller just inside the woodshed and took the joint out of her pocket. She spun the rough little wheel of the lighter. Sparks like a tiny blue thornbush in her hands.

  Once upon a time there was a beautiful woman, Koong-se, who fell in love with her father’s clerk, Chang. But her father had promised Koong-se to a wealthy duke, so he sacked Chang and built a high wall around the palace to keep the lovers apart. The duke arrived bearing a casket of jewels and the wedding was set for the day on which the willow blossom fell. The day before the wedding Chang slipped into the palace disguised as a servant and the two lovers ran away with the casket of jewels. Koong-se’s father saw them and chased them over the bridge brandishing a whip. Luckily they managed to escape by stealing the duke’s ship and sailing it to a deserted island where they lived happily together.

  Years later, however, Koong-se’s father discovered the whereabouts of this deserted island and dispatched soldiers who caught the two lovers and killed them. The gods saw this and took pity on Koong-se and Chang and transformed them into the pair of doves who hover permanently in the sky above the water and the willow trees and the temple garden.

  Society has become far too materialistic, said Daisy. We’ve lost sight of the important things.

  For an intelligent young woman, said Richard, you really are incredibly naïve.

  Richard … said Louisa.

  I am not naïve, said Daisy. She didn’t want to be protected, she wanted to win the argument on Richard’s terms.

  Alex stretched out his legs and knitted his fingers together as if he was settling down to watch a good film.

  You want to live in the Middle Ages? said Richard. He knew the conversation with Dominic had upset him and that he was taking it out on Daisy, but he disliked being lectured, especially by someone who thought the rest of them would burn in hell. You want kids to die of cholera and dysentery? You want your teeth to fall out? No radio, no television, no central heating?

  Richard … said Louisa, more insistently this time.

  That’s not the point, said Daisy. She hadn’t drunk alcohol for eight months whereas Richard had downed a bottle of wine. It should have given her an advantage but it seemed to work the other way round.

  It is precisely the point, said Richard. You need money. You need big business. You need competition. You need people to want more, to want better, to want faster. Materialism is not some evil tumour in the body of society. Materialism is the reason why most of us in this room are actually alive.

  Angela had rather enjoyed it at first, these two opinionated people locking horns, but something more was at stake now and she could hear the malice in Richard’s voice. She remembered their conversation in The Granary. She was beginning to realise that he was not a very nice man.

  Just because you’re more intelligent, said Daisy, you think that makes you right.

  One-nil, said Alex, who had drunk several beers himself. Straight through the keeper’s legs.

  Richard didn’t take his eyes off Daisy. And you’ve got some growing up to do, young lady.

  I think that’s probably enough, Louisa said quietly to Richard, as if he was a small boy, and Angela thought, Yes, that’s exactly what he is.

  You all right? asked Dominic.

  I’m OK. Benjy was sitting on the edge of the bath in his Tarzan pants and his skateboard top. I’m just a bit sad.

  You’re tired, that’s what you are. I’ll do your teeth for you.

  Ouch.

  Well, keep your mouth open.

  There were bottles and boxes arranged along the window sill like a little alien city. Moisturiser, dental floss, an electric toothbrush, cyber-man bubble bath. He slalomed between them in his space scooter.

  Spit and swill.

  What’s a tampon?

  You don’t want to know.

  Are they like condoms?

  Seriously, you do not want to know.

  Is it a sex thing?

  No, it’s a lady thing.

  Dominic shepherded him to the bedroom. Benjy got under the duvet and fidgeted himself into a comfortable position while Dominic picked up The Gate Between Worlds from the carpet. So … They took off their boots.

  ‘Jacket, too,’ said Mellor.

  ‘But I’ll get cold.’

  ‘You can be cold or you can be dead,’ said Mellor. ‘Now take it off and leave it on the ground next to the boots.’

  Joseph shivered. The dogs were getting louder. ‘Are we going to swim?’

  ‘We walk through the shallows,’ said Mellor, ‘over to the rocks. The dogs will lose our scent and the Smoke Men will think we’ve drowned or swum to the other side. Quickly. Into the water.’

  Did I miss something? Dominic paused in the doorway.

  Daisy and Richard had an argument about religion, said Angela.

  He was showing off, said Louisa. The way men do.

  I resent that, said Alex.

  You’ll be exactly the same, said Louisa. It sounded almost flirtatious.

  Dominic touched Daisy’s shoulder. You OK?

  I’m fine. Though in truth she felt a little unsteady, like when you sliced a finger chopping vegetables.
>
  Benjy all right? asked Angela.

  Out like the proverbial. He surveyed the room. Where’s Richard?

  He thought, for a moment, that it was a minor hallucination, an orange firefly in the dark of the woodshed that vanished almost as soon as he saw it. He froze. That breathless adrenaline clarity. Someone was in there. The moonlight dimmed and brightened with the passage of clouds. A wisp of smoke trailed from the gable. He did a rapid calculation. Melissa. He should have let it go. Don’t ask, don’t tell. But his control over various things had slipped during the day and he disliked the idea of backing down. He walked round to the open side of the woodshed. He expected to see where she was sitting but the interior was filled with a sheer and impenetrable darkness. Melissa?

  Hello, Richard. Her voice made him jump. Fancy meeting you here. Disembodied completely.

  The orange firefly appeared. You’re smoking.

  No shit, Sherlock.

  Smoking is not good for you. He should have planned this better. But the smell … What’s in that cigarette?

  She blew smoke towards him and it bloomed into the moonlight. Want a drag?

  Put it out.

  Go on. That knowing voice, sexual almost. Help you relax.

  I said …

  Richard, said Melissa, with amused patience. The effect of the marijuana, perhaps. You are not in charge of me.

  It was obvious to both of them that he had already lost both the battle and any means of honourable retreat. Let’s see what your mother says about this. He turned away.

  Oh, come on, said Melissa, she’s smoked enough of the stuff.

  I sincerely doubt that.

  Melissa laughed. Jesus, Richard, there are so many things you do not know about my mother.

  He wanted to step into the dark and slap her face. The thought scared him. He moved slowly backwards as if he were carrying a tray stacked with glasses. We shall talk about this later.

  They have two orchestras, said Louisa. Swimming pool, climbing wall. But her friends live miles away. She needs a chauffeur, basically.

  The front door thumped shut and Richard walked into the room. He looked punch-drunk. Melissa is smoking marijuana in the garden and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it, apparently.

  Louisa closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Angela and Dominic looked at one another. Were they allowed to find this funny?

  So, anyway … He had expected a bigger reaction. Then he saw Daisy and realised how dishonourably he had treated her and how this mattered more. He deflated visibly. Angela poured a coffee from the cafetière and slid it towards the space on the bench he had vacated ten minutes earlier. He sat down. I apologise for my behaviour earlier.

  That’s all right, said Daisy, though she was thinking mostly about Melissa, the drugs, the rudeness, how symbolic it was that she was sitting outside in a cold dark place. If only she were able to look up to the light then Daisy could reach down and take her hand.

  It was very bad manners. I’m sorry.

  The front door clicked and thumped again. Melissa passed across the yellow rectangle of the lit hallway waving at them. Nighty-night, campers.

  Louisa got to her feet. I’m going to have words with that girl. And she was gone.

  Dominic patted Richard on the shoulder. She’s a teenager. Your job is to be completely and utterly in the wrong.

  The Smoke Man ran towards him, roaring and swinging the spiked mace around his head. Benjamin pulled the flintlock out of his pocket and fired. The Smoke Man’s mask cracked and the brown gas hissed into the cold air. He screamed and fell to his knees. Nizh … Nizh … He grabbed the pipe from the breathing tank and shoved it directly into his mouth, sucking furiously.

  No, Melissa, you listen to me. I know I can’t tell you what to do. You have made that abundantly clear. But if you try to drive Richard away … I was treated like a doormat by my parents. I was treated like a doormat by my brothers. I was treated like a doormat by your father. I am happy for the first time in my life. Richard loves me. Richard respects me. Richard is kind to me. If you destroy this, I swear to God …

  My fairy lord, this must be done with haste,

  For night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast;

  And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger,

  At whose approach ghosts, wand’ring here and there,

  Troop home to churchyards. Damned spirits all

  That in cross-ways and floods have burial,

  Already to their wormy beds are gone,

  For fear lest day should look their shames upon;

  They wilfully themselves exil’d from light,

  And must for aye consort with black-brow’d night.

  He rolled over and lay there, watching her sleeping. The butter-coloured hair, the pink of her ear. He touched her shoulder gently so that she didn’t wake. There are so many things you do not know about my mother.

  Lord, said Daisy, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy …

  The witching hour. Deep in the watches of the night, when the old and the weak and the sick let go and the membrane between this world and the other stretches almost to nothing. The moon white, the valley blue. She stands on the hill. The animals sense something out of kilter and move away. Rabbits, mice, nightjars. She gazes down towards the house. The porch light comes on and goes off again. A lamp burns in a bedroom window. Stone walls still holding the heat of the sun. She begins to walk, the grass wet under her bare feet. She climbs a stile over a drystone wall and cuts diagonally across the field below. The lamp in the bedroom window goes out.

  She pushes through a low stand of gorse to reach the track which curls around the house. Thorns rip her dress and when she steps onto the broken limestone there are gashes on her thighs and calves that drip and glitter. Someone turns and settles in their shallow sleep.

  The lure of human things. She circles the house anticlockwise then steps under the porch. The door means nothing to her. She stands on the cold flags of the hallway, coats like bats on their brass hooks, the mess of shoes. She can feel it all, centuries of habitation, paint over paint over plaster over stone.

  Her mother and father are sleeping in the room to her left. She moves down the corridor, puts her hand on the little metal dog’s head of the newel post and makes her way upstairs. The old planks are silent under her feet. Beeswax and camphor, little bouquets of lavender hung in wardrobes. At the top of the stairs there is a print of a bear and a dog fighting. That human smell. Musk, sweetness, rot. She walks along the landing and into the bedroom.

  The Art of Daily Prayer. Neutrogena hand cream. Jeans, knickers and navy smock folded on the seat of the chair. The girl turns on her pillow, hands fighting their way through imaginary cobwebs. She knows someone is in the room. She moans something that is not a word.

  Does she hate this girl or love her? Perhaps everyone thinks that about their sister. Is this the girl who stole her life? Or is this the girl she would have been? She reaches down and lays her hand against the side of Daisy’s head. She struggles but Karen doesn’t take her hand away.

  Sunday

  ALEX WAS RUNNING back along the ridge from Hatterall Hill, the ruins of Llanthony below, scattered tents in blue and orange. The map showed a path snaking down the other side so you didn’t have to turn back at the cairn, but it was invisible from up here. Fuck it. He headed down through the bracken and long grass. Two weeks and he’d be mountain-biking in Coed-y-Brenin. He’d made a tit of himself with Melissa, he could see that now. Slow learner, or what. He’d only had sex two times, like actually getting his cock in. He avoided Kelly Robinson for two weeks afterwards because they were pissed out of their heads and she was obese, though he thought about it quite often when he was having a wank. But there was someone walking along the road, down there where it flattened out on the way to Longtown, a
girl with a bag over her shoulder.

  Louisa came round dreaming of Honk the Moose, thinking it was 1969 and her mother was sitting on the end of the bed reading to her, but it was Richard and he was wearing the stripy Boden pyjama bottoms that made him look like a pirate, except he wasn’t smiling and she wondered if he was about to deliver some bad news. I’m sorry about last night.

  She hoisted herself up on to her elbows. It was her daughter who should apologise, surely.

  She told me you smoked marijuana. And I just wanted to say … He slowed and redirected himself. You don’t have to keep secrets. A little laugh. Lower dependence and physical harm than alcohol or cigarettes according to Professor Nutt’s infamous Lancet paper. Oh dear. He rubbed his face. I do sound like the most awful prig.

  She brushed the hair out of her eyes. Her mind was fuzzy. She could feel a pillow crease running down her cheek.

  Anyway. He stood up. I shall keep my distance on the Melissa front.

  She sat and swivelled her feet over the edge of the bed and distinctly heard a small boy, standing very close to her, saying, Dad …?

  ‘I want to cut off her head and take out her heart. Ah! You a surgeon, and so shocked! You, whom I have seen with no tremble of hand or heart, do operations of life and death that make the rest shudder …’ But the words had stopped making sense, so Daisy closed the book and read the back of the Corn Flakes packet. Thiamin (B1 ) 1.2mg, Riboflavin (B2 ) 1.3mg. Did anyone ever ring the customer care line? Lonely old ladies making friends with young men in Calcutta.

  The world felt fuzzy this morning, so hard to cling to. That nervous bubbling in her abdomen. She wanted her things around her, the battered life-sized cardboard Princess Leia Dad stole from a cinema when he was a student, the enamel signs from Great-Grandad’s shop in Manchester, Keener’s Kola and broken biscuits.

  They’d made a film at school, Gemma’s Choice, about a girl getting pregnant at fourteen. Daisy played the mother. The thrill of putting on that lime-green cardigan, her own self vanishing, thinking, I could kiss anyone, I could kill anyone. She didn’t recognise herself on screen. She looked possessed. Now she was doing A-level economics. Adam Smith and production transformation curves. She reopened the book. ‘The girl is dead. Why mutilate her poor body without need?’